tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7872819010848426693.post579552242807692902..comments2024-03-28T02:46:03.227-04:00Comments on The Historical Society: When Is It Time to Stop Teaching Something?Randallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16755286304057000048noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7872819010848426693.post-54850216333770007012012-08-08T07:26:29.507-04:002012-08-08T07:26:29.507-04:00I teach Western Civilization in a small high schoo...I teach Western Civilization in a small high school, so my challenge is to cover 4,000 years in one school year! <br /><br />When I started teaching four years ago (second career) I did well to squeeze in one day on the Cold War at the very end of the school year. This spring I realized I'm making the classic mistake that my high school teachers made 30 years ago - I'm not teaching my students about the world into which they will graduate. <br /><br />This year I'm rearranging some topics so that I can teach my students about post-Cold War Europe. Unfortunately, that means we'll spend less time with the ancient Greeks and Romans. I feel the trade-off is worth it, though, as learning about modern Europe will be much more relevant to my 21st-century students.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7872819010848426693.post-21406683812385154482012-07-31T16:10:59.101-04:002012-07-31T16:10:59.101-04:00Thanks for this thoughtful post, and I also apprec...Thanks for this thoughtful post, and I also appreciate the follow-up discussion. Steven Cromack's idea works well, I think, because it forces higher-level thinking (drawing comparisons and contrasts between events that thus demand a student's facility with the facts at hand), and I agree that the textbook becomes increasingly unimportant to the way that we teach U.S. history, as Jonathan wrote in his follow-up comment.Andreahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10569323604428729688noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7872819010848426693.post-17399694456873430152012-07-31T14:10:02.071-04:002012-07-31T14:10:02.071-04:00I happened to run into my high school history teac...I happened to run into my high school history teacher the other day, and he says that my old school has "solved" this problem by eliminating US history before 1900 -- they only teach from 1900 to the present. Which leaves you time to cover modern history in depth, but I don't see how you can even <i>teach</i> that span on its own -- the entire first half of the 20th century doesn't make any <i>sense</i> if you don't have the context of the industrial revolution and America's rise to dominance and imperialism. <br /><br />I like your solution much better -- to decide which things have to be covered in less depth -- but it's a much more difficult approach. But I applaud you for making that effort. And for recognizing that history has to extend farther as new generations come in. My high school curriculum barely covered Watergate, and had nothing at all about the fall of the Berlin Wall. Which made it really difficult to connect events from the 70s to the modern world, if you were 8 when the Wall fell and remember essentially nothing about it. tpingelahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17596468361476741984noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7872819010848426693.post-72540844768768780642012-07-30T22:34:21.296-04:002012-07-30T22:34:21.296-04:00Deciding what goes in, what gets left out is inter...Deciding what goes in, what gets left out is interesting, sometime excruciating, intellectual work. Your story about updating your survey to include 9/11 and the new world disorder is my story, too, Jonathan. But the problem of content is not the only intellectual problem of the survey, though many history teachers talk like it is. HOW to teach the content we select is the more demanding intellectual problem. If anyone wonders how this could be so, or whether it so, check out the wiggins & mctighe book referenced by hcr. Applying the lessons of backwards design in that approach makes taking oral field exams for the phd seem like a breeze.Lendol Calderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17899522772207745213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7872819010848426693.post-59367183244009498152012-05-21T22:03:25.424-04:002012-05-21T22:03:25.424-04:00Jonathan, you write "perhaps its best to chan...Jonathan, you write "perhaps its best to change your approach before defeat becomes inevitable."<br /><br />That sounds an awful lot like "if you don't change, you will be defeated." <br /><br />By the way, the <i>shortest</i> upper-level survey I teach -- the Chinese and Japanese equivalents to your US surveys in focus -- is 300 years. I'm not particularly challenged by adding a decade or two on the end there.Jonathan Dresnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04356112719229675996noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7872819010848426693.post-29956252742681593502012-05-21T14:10:56.124-04:002012-05-21T14:10:56.124-04:00Thanks for this, Jonathan. It's so important t...Thanks for this, Jonathan. It's so important to have this issue on the teaching table. <br /><br />I'm a bit of a broken record on this topic, but once again I have to recommend something along the lines of the Teaching By Design method outlined by Wiggins and McTighe in 2005. If you start by figuring out what you want your students to take away from your class, organizing it becomes much easier... and much more idiosyncratic. As your lens changes, so does what is important.hcrhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07334093881332383848noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7872819010848426693.post-73083184468661424532012-05-21T12:48:18.908-04:002012-05-21T12:48:18.908-04:00Jonathan:
Just because I do want to adjust the wa...Jonathan:<br /><br />Just because I do want to adjust the way I cover things doesn't mean that everyone else does. More importantly, getting textbook publishers to adjust their coverage is like turning an ocean liner. To me, going textbook-less is by far the most appealing thing about uncoverage and has been my transitional step on that road.Jonathanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18397299407395751211noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7872819010848426693.post-25039115006432532502012-05-21T11:16:08.228-04:002012-05-21T11:16:08.228-04:00Thanks for the excellent post, Jonathan. What you&...Thanks for the excellent post, Jonathan. What you've done for the First and Second New Deals, I've found myself doing for the First and Second Great Awakenings in my U.S. religious history course. I've now condensed the two discussions to a single one on the evangelical revivals. Frees up time to dig into other topics that engage them like Joseph Smith and the origins of Mormonism.Chris Benekehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08623325601668600846noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7872819010848426693.post-54036743789274313272012-05-21T11:04:34.853-04:002012-05-21T11:04:34.853-04:00It seems that American history approaches that mom...It seems that American history approaches that moment when chronology no longer works. What professors and secondary school teachers must be trained in is themes. <br /><br />Asking students what the role of the government was during the New Deal is far more important than the Alphabet soup programs. Now, students have a point of comparison. How did FDR's conception of the role of the government compare to Eisenhower, or Ronald Reagan? Now history becomes relevant for students. Once its relevant, only then will they investigate the rest on their own.Steven Cromacknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7872819010848426693.post-88017615689408334852012-05-21T10:15:35.915-04:002012-05-21T10:15:35.915-04:00You've just admitted that the coverage model i...You've just admitted that the coverage model is thoughtful, adaptable, driven by appropriate historical and pedafogical considerations. What's the real issue? That there are bad teachers who don't go beyond the textbook? That's not going to change with more "uncoverage" textbooks.Jonathan Dresnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04356112719229675996noreply@blogger.com